Advanced Spade Is Building a Business Around Locating and Installing Underground Utilities

The founder of Advanced Spade Company said he started the company in 2024 after working at SpaceX and The Boring Company, on construction projects in Austin, and for about two years at Anduril. His interest in underground construction grew from the difficulty of knowing where existing utilities are and avoiding damage to them. After wildfires in Los Angeles, he said, people began coming to the team asking how power lines could be moved underground. The company digs holes and installs utilities.

Advanced Spade began with private utility locating and mapmaking. General contractors, which the founder said typically hold contracts from utilities, later asked the company to do drilling work. He said Advanced Spade uses its own datasets and maps to gain an edge when drilling, and expands the size and technical difficulty of its projects gradually. In his account, growth in the industry depends on hands-on fieldwork and reputation; technology helps the company move faster through the construction industry’s usual growth curve.

The company combines subcontracting with a gradual expansion of its scope. The founder said subcontracting involves less administrative burden but gives the company less control over its own direction. As it moves into more difficult work, Advanced Spade wants to leave lower-end work and sell other, smaller contractors tools developed through its own projects. He cited a locator that the team has, he said, spent years improving. In his view, such a tool is easier to sell after the company has used it while competing for contracts.

The founder also said the company has engineers integrating data and building better tools. Asked about new technologies and materials, he said there are ideas he looks forward to discussing in about five years. This is an expectation of a future disclosure, not evidence that those developments are already ready.